After All My Erstwhile Dear, My No

A Poem From Edna St. Vincent Millay: Grown-up Was It For This I Uttered Prayers, And Sobbed And Cursed And Kicked The Stairs, That Now, Domestic As A Plate, I Should Retire At Half-past Eight?

She Is Neither Pink Nor Pale, And She Never Will Be All Mine; She Learned Her Hands In A Fairy-tale, And Her Mouth On A Valentine. She Has More Hair Than She Needs; In The Sun ’tis A Woe To Me! And Her Voice Is A String Of Colored Beads, Or Steps Leading Into The Sea. She Loves Me All That She Can, And Her Ways To My Ways Resign; But She Was Not Made For Any Man, And She Never Will Be All Mine.

L Am Not Resigned To The Shutting Away Of Loving Hearts In The Hard Ground. So It Is, And So It Will Be, For So It Has Been, Time Out Of Mind: Into The Darkness They Go, The Wise And The Lovely. Crowned With Lilies And With Laurel They Go; But I Am Not Resigned.

You Are Loved. If So, What Else Matters?

Life In Itself Is Nothing, An Empty Cup, A Flight Of Uncarpeted Stairs.